Paul and Lucy Spadoni periodically live in Tuscany to explore Paul’s Italian roots, practice their Italian and enjoy “la dolce vita.”
All work is copyrighted and may not be reprinted without written permission from the author, who can be contacted at www.paulspadoni.com

Saturday, November 26, 2016

DNA testing has helped me add to the Italian branch of our family tree

For
the past six years, I’ve been passively searching for more
relatives who descended from the brothers and sisters of my great
grandfather Pietro Spadoni. Up until 2011, I didn’t even know
Pietro had any siblings, since he died in 1904, and my closest living
cousins in Italy were born much later and knew almost nothing about
him.

In
2011, I discovered, by researching in the state and church archives
in Pescia, that Pietro had had four brothers and five sisters
(although at least three died in infancy). I found that three of
them—Francesco, Angelo and Gioconda—married and had children. I
knew that names of their children, and in a few cases, even their
grandchildren, but most records after 1900 are not available to view
for reasons of privacy, preventing me from finding any living
descendants. In 2014, I managed to hunt down third cousins Silvano
and Emo Celli, the great grandsons of Gioconda Spadoni (I
finally have a talk with cousin Leino), but I had no success
finding any descendants of Francesco and Angelo.

My
technique for finding cousins in Italy consisted of looking up
Spadonis near Ponte Buggianese in the white pages and dropping in on
them unexpectedly. This is not something I do well, since my Italian
is not great, nor am I particularly outgoing or extroverted.
Nevertheless, I managed to meet various Spadonis: Leonello, Fausto,
Ilio, Lara, Mauro and Bruna. All of them except Leonello proved to be
extremely distant cousins, and even Leonello’s ties dated back a
generation prior to Pietro.

Recently,
though, I have found a great number of descendants of Angelo, through
the unlikely resource of a DNA test that my brother Roger took. DNA
testing has become both affordable and popular in recent years. It is
primarily used to show people their historical ethnic backgrounds,
but it has the added benefit of making it possible to contact other
people who share one’s genetic history—relatives who could be as
distant as eighth cousins.

Roger’s
test showed up more than 4,500 cousins, and the number grows each
week as more people undergo DNA testing and the database expands. Two
of his first cousins have been tested and show up in the files, and
several known second cousins are there as well. A vast majority of
the relatives—at least 4,350—are in the category of fifth through
eighth cousins, and likely we’ll never actually find out how we’re
related. Most of these cousins don’t have family trees that extend
back more than a couple of generations, and many don’t have trees
in Ancestry.com’s database at all.

However,
one match caught my attention, and when I clicked on the person’s
link, I saw an ancestor named Quartina Spadoni listed. We have a
Quartina in our tree, a granddaughter of Angelo Spadoni. The dates of
birth and other information matched between the two trees.

Ancestry
doesn’t give out any contact information for the people who share
your DNA, but it does allow you to contact them through Ancestry’s
messaging system. I contacted this cousin, and we have since shared
family information and become friends on Facebook. Now I have filled
in considerable information about her branch of the family, including
names of relatives in both Italy and the United States. I’ve also
become Facebook friends with some her close relatives who are in
Italy. One of them is a hair stylist in Chiesina Uzzanese, and we
intend to meet in person next time I’m in Italy.

We’ve
also been contacted by a few other people who noted that we are
probably related by common Italian ancestors. The specifics of our
connection are yet to be determined, but as we expand our family
trees, we hope to come across the common ancestor. This is part of
the fun of ancestry research—finding new puzzle pieces and trying
to properly locate them.

In
the days leading up the Christmas, popular genealogy websites such as
Ancestry.com and Family Tree DNA usually have sales on DNA testing.
Even without sales, the cost of a basic ‟family finder” test is
now under $100. The test will show general areas from where your
ancestors hailed. It will also give you a long list of likely
relatives who have already submitted their DNA for testing.

If
you order a kit, you’ll be sent the testing materials needed, along
with a return mailing envelope. You either take a swab from inside
your mouth (Family Tree DNA) or provide a sample of your saliva
(Ancestry). Results are usually ready in about two months. Since
Ancestry began offering genetic testing in 2012, more than 1 million
people had been tested by 2015; by June of 2016, the number exceeded 2 million. A day will soon come when knowing one’s ethnic
makeup from a genetic standpoint will be as commonplace as knowing
one’s blood type.

I
just ordered ‟family finder” testing kits from both Ancestry and
Family Tree DNA for both myself and Lucy, taking advantage of the
pre-Christmas sale prices (I had previously had my Y-DNA test, but
that doesn’t indicate overall ethnicity, and it only tests the male
family line). It is our Christmas present to ourselves.

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About Me

First off, before you hassle me about our title, Lucy thought of it. Yes, I know some people may think broad is derogatory, but the etymology is uncertain and she doesn’t find it offensive, and it made me laugh. We have been married since 1974 and are empty-nesters now, which allows me to bring my submerged Italophilia into the open. We first came to live in Italy from February-April in 2011 and have returned during the same months every year. From 2011-2015, we lived in San Salvatore, at the foot of the hilltop city Montecarlo, where my paternal grandparents were born, raised and, in 1908, married. In late 2015, we bought a home in Montecarlo. We come for a variety of purposes: We want to re-establish contact with distant cousins in both Nonno’s and Nonna’s families, we want to learn the language and see what it is like to live as Italians in modern Italy, we like to travel and experience different cultures. Even if we aren’t successful at achieving these purposes, we love Italy and enjoy every moment here, so there is no chance we will be disappointed. I am grateful to God for giving me a wife who is beautiful, clever, adaptable and willing to jump into my dreams wholeheartedly.